The high Victorian Gothic building is almost a half-mile in length. (Rob Yasinsac, Hudson Valley Ruins )

Last month, lightning struck a former state psychiatric hospital built in 1868 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., setting off a blaze that destroyed the building's 500-foot-long wing.

Designed by Frederick Clark Withers, the Hudson River State Hospital was to be renovated this year. In 2005, Hudson Heritage LLC had bought the 159-acre site from the state of New York for $2.75 million, planning to build townhouses and restore the 509,853-square-foot main building.

No one was hurt in the May 31 fire, but the South Wing of the brick Victorian Gothic building was gutted. "The fire was costly," Arnold Moss, principal for Hudson Heritage CPCR Ventures, told the Poughkeepsie Journal. "We have no coverage for the damage."

Once owned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's father, James, the hospital site was landscaped by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York City's Central Park.

The state, which abandoned the hospital in 2001, has done little maintenance on the site's 26 historic buildings since the 1970s, when it relocated most of the hospital facilities. Last year, Hudson Heritage LLC spent $500,000 to stabilize the main building's roof before the town of Poughkeepsie passed a moratorium on new residential projects, stalling the work.

In 1999, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Hudson River State Hospital and three other abandoned New York hospitals to its list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Want Today's News headlines delivered to your e-mail box? Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter >>